***** PoV: Arthur “Necrosbane” Boateng *****
“Oh, before I forget to ask again, what happened after I left?” I asked. “Did you manage to catch the displacers?”
“Yes, at the last minute before I got displaced. Their stealth was just good enough they knew that I couldn’t target them with any of my standard shihoth weaponry as I did not have good enough targeting data. I’m not sure they realised which shihoth ship I was as the necromancers never got this close to me, so I never got to use my Spaghetti Weapon. The necromancers understand the basic law of dealing with hostile dreadnaughts: don’t get in a knife fight with one unless you are a dreadnaught or with a dreadnought. Whether or not the Displacers in general have learned that lesson, I’m not sure, but this group clearly forgot.
“They were probably assuming that I couldn’t hit them there because shihoth weaponry is addressed to that person right there and require reliable sensor data for targeting. I, however, also have the Spaghetti Weapon, which is addressed ‘To whom it may concern,’ and doesn’t really care about armor.”
“So you’re saying that they got so excited at getting all of us that they forgot one of the most basic rules of space combat?” I asked.
“Yup.”
“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. Once you take away their main weapon, they’re not actually that good at combat. If they weren’t such sneaky sneaks, we’d have just run over them by now.”
“Yeah, it’s kinda hard to fight them before we find them. Pity we’re the only ones who have a good countermeasure to their shenanigans. With that out the way, what is this about a status page?”
“So now that we actually have a little bit of time with nothing pressing, we can actually look at Arthur’s status screen and get all of the tutorials out of the way.” replied Victrina. “Just say ‘status,’ and focus on pulling it up.”
“Status.”
Generating Status for Arthur “Necrosbane” Boateng….
Error! Standard Status is not compatible with the Gift of the Fadded Seal.
Recalibrating to display in Read-only mode. Please wait…
“Huh. Didn’t see that one coming…” said Victrina. “I wonder if that’ll happen with my status page. I’ll wait until your’s is done before I check mine, don’t want them to get tangled or something.”
“Fair enough.”
Error! Cannot display Status for Arthur “Necrosbane” Boateng. Initial calibration incomplete.
Error! Cannot run initial calibration due to all Soul Anchor Points being used by the Gift of the Fadded Seal.
Analysing Growth Potential of Arthur “Necrosbane” Boatteng via the Gift of the Fadded Seal…
Growth Potential Acceptable, removing access to standard Status screen due to unusability…
Access Removal Complete!
“Well ok then. That’s not what I expected, but somehow it’s not surprising,” said Victrina. “I wonder what that this has done to my status page then?
“Status!”
Error! Status page function has been subsumed by the Gift of the Fadded Seal. No stats or abilities were lost, but no more benefits can be gained via traditional system assistance.
“Well, that’s better than I feared, but worse than I had hoped. However, I can deal with this,” Victrina said. “I guess we look at the details of the Gift of the Fadded Seal instead?”
“Alright. Gift Status!” I said.
Gift Status for Arthur “Necrosbane” Boateng (Teacher)
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Primary Race:
Fire Dragon - 100% Awake - 1st
Secondary Race:
Life Elemental (Hidden) - 100% Awake - 2nd
Tertiary Race:
Fire Elemental (Hidden) - 100% Awake - 3rd
Gift Status for Victrina Vitafina (Student)
Primary Race:
Life Dragon - 20% Awake, 32.5% Grown - 1st
Secondary Race:
Fire Elemental (Hidden) - 10% Awake, 70% Grown - 2nd
Tertiary Race:
Life Elemental (Hidden) - 7.5% Awake, 40% Grown - 3rd
“Huh. That’s a bit different than the last time I looked at it,” I said, tilting our head a bit in thought. “It all makes sense though. All of your bloodlines are more awake than they used to be, and now it’s also tracking their growth. I wonder how far they’re growing?”
Life Dragon
Awaiting territory claim
Fire Elemental
Awakening is waiting on metaphysical maturity, estimated 25.6 hours remaining.
Life Elemental
Finishing first stage of Awakening, physical maturity in progress
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” I nodded. “Despite their rarity, Elementals are not actually that complicated physically, so the elementals having more growth progress isn’t exactly surprising. All they really care about is being able to soak in their desired mana type routinely. Absorbing that mana is rather unusual in a healthy elemental, but our situation is not exactly normal, now is it?”
“I should hope not!” Victrina replied. “I cannot image most people would be comfortable when shoved together with a random stranger like this.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure divine providence is involved. Even with the gestalt, things wouldn’t normally go this smoothly. Moving on, dragons are all about claiming territory and then improving and protecting that territory, so I’m not surprised that your draconic bloodline isn’t quite as advanced as the other two. To start off with, it’s usually a static territory inside your parent’s territory while you learn how to take care of your space, assuming your parents know what they’re doing. More on that once the Conclave is over.”
“Fair enough. If my elemental bloodlines are more developed than my draconic bloodline, how come the draconic bloodline still my primary bloodline?”
“There are several reasons for that. First off, every bloodline has it’s own ways that it prefers to operate that are usually but not alway s the same from person to person. Elementals would rather not be openly acknowledged by the world in general, so don’t typically take the driver’s seat. Dragons, on the other hand, would typically prefer to be in the spotlight. Second, elementals are perfectly happy to sit back and passively observe the world around them most of the time, while dragons usually prefer to be doing something. Third, the order of your bloodlines usually reflects your personality in some way, meaning the more they line up with your personality, the higher up on the list they will be.
“Any other questions?”
“Not at the moment,” replied Victrina.
“Great!” interjected Spaghetti. “In that case, y’all should probably head to the medbay for a preliminary scan so we can figure out how to split you two apart again. Assuming that you don’t want to spend the rest of your lives fused together?”
“Nope!” we chorused.
“That said, separation should probably wait until her dragon bloodline is caught up with mine, there are several things that it will be much easiertt to teach this way, not to mention that it’ll be easier for her to acquire the necessary resources for some of the stages if we do it together.”
“That’s fine, this is a preliminary scan anyway, I’ll need to do some more processing and get both medical and engineering involved for alternative pairs of eyes. I may be able to think really fast, but getting other opinions is still useful, especially with problems I’ve never seen before, doubly so when several someone’s lives are on the line.”
“Fair enough. Off to the medbay then!” agreed Victrina.
“Actually, as a short-term solution, do you think you could use a glamor to at least pretend that you’re still two people?” asked Spaghetti.
“That should work!” I said. “I can cobble the spell code together while you do the medbay scan, and then it should be time to head off to the Conclave, yeah?”
“Yeah, sounds about right.”
[So, how come you didn’t suggest this glamor thing earlier?]
{I thought about it briefly when we first got merged, but I was too tired to do that properly, especially in the time available. By the time we had time again, I’d already decided not to previously, so I didn’t think of it again.}
[Fair enough. So how does this illusion thing work?]
{Oh, and the other reason is the way I’ll be putting the glamor together, you’d be piloting a default model rather than a copy of yourself. After the medbay scan, I’ll be able to make it a glamor of you in a repaired version of your armor. I may have a way for you to be able to interact with things, but it’ll depend on if I can keep my armor in standby and still power the glamour. I’m honestly not sure how much mana this will take, I don’t usually play around with the illusion side of glamor too much, I’m far more familiar with the space bending side.}
[Wait, I thought glamor was a fae type magic. How can you use glamor?]
{When the Faded Seal forced the various sentient races into human form, it used fae glamor to do so. As a side effect of this, it baked the glamor into our blood and bones right along with the rest of the Seal. Not everybody is any good at figuring out how to use it since it’s not part of their bloodlines, but it’s not uncommon to be able to change eye color or hair color at will.
{However, this will be an auto mated spell that does not require a concentration check because my armor and my smart wrist bag will be doing all of the heavy lifting, all you have to do is tell it to walk around.}
[Oh? This sounds like it is going to be a lot of fun!]
{Oh, you have no idea. Watch and learn!}